Rolfe Winkler

Note: Apologies for no links yesterday. Busy day writing columns!

SEC to vote on new money fund rules (Johnson, WSJ) Unfortunately, the SEC won’t do away with $1 NAVs, price fluctuations will be published on a 60 day lag. So investors will continue to treat money funds as cash equivalents, even though they aren’t, and the systemic risk they pose won’t really go away.

Fed weighs interest on reserves as new benchmark (Lanman, Bloomberg) This will be a key interest rate to watch whether or not the Fed makes it the benchmark. The expansion of the Fed’s balance sheet over the past year+ has stuffed banks full of excess reserves, reserves that banks will lend out if the economy — and loan demand — picks up. The Fed needs to keep those excess reserves sequestered in order to prevent inflation. To do so, it may have to pay higher rates. For a fuller explanation see this previous column.

Failed Senate vote on budget commission shows difficulty in cutting deficits (Faler, Bloomberg) So much for a fiscal commission based on the base-closing commission…

After three months, only 35 subscriptions to Newsday’s website (Koblin, NY Observer) Print subscribers get free online access. But this is still not a good showing for selling online only subscriptions. The NYT needn’t worry that it’s pick up will be this small when they put up their pay wall. I, for one, will pay for their content, as I pay for WSJ. I ‘d subscribe to FT too if their website wasn’t so slow…

Top English central banker supports splitting banks (Thomas, NYT) This should come as no surprise. A speech by Mr. King in October laid out his support for steps similar to those Obama just released.

Roubini: Greece is bankrupt (Khan, CNBC) Thank you, Captain Obvious.

Obama aims to ax moon mission (Block/Matthews, O.S.) There’s no constituency for budget cuts, so Obama deserves support from budget hawks for moves like this. We all like the moon I’m sure. But I like things like veterans benefits much more.

Iraqi government spends $85m on dowsing rods sold as “bomb detectors” (Hawley/Jones, BBC) Those not familiar with dowsing rods, see Wikipedia.

Wait, how much snow? (YouTube) No. He didn’t.

Wow…

Tishman gives up Stuyvesant Town (Wei/Spector, WSJ) Way underwater was this deal: the price tag was $5.4 billion, but the property is thought to be worth only $1.8 billion now. Tishman put up only $112 million of equity. Lenders and investors get wiped out. Good. By the way, if underwater investors can walk away, there’s little reason underwater homeowners should feel a moral obligation to keep paying their own overpriced mortgages….

SEC mulled national security status for AIG details (Goldstein, Reuters) “U.S. securities regulators originally treated the New York Federal Reserve’s bid to keep secret many of the details of the American International Group bailout like a request to protect matters of national security…”

Avatar to surpass Titanic as top box office draw of all time (Box Office Mojo) Inflation in the price of movie tickets plus the fact that many are paying $16 to watch Avatar in 3D, mean the comparison isn’t totally fair. But whatever. James Cameron has directed the two best grossing movies of all time. And Avatar is poised to go well over $2 billion…in less than two months!

BOJ open to extending loans, bond buying (Hidaka/Otsuma, Bloomberg) The Japanese central bank has engaged in various rounds of quantitative easing since the late ’90s I believe. Yet they’re still unable to keep deflation at bay. There are those that say this is proof that QE doesn’t necessarily lead to inflation. The bet being made by guys like David Einhorn is that eventually the debt load overwhelms the Japanese economy causing the yen to collapse. Indeed, the inflation that people fear here in the U.S. isn’t so much the old wage-push variety. Rather it’s a sudden loss of confidence in the dollar when it becomes clear the U.S. can’t pay its bills.

Bernanke confirmation looks set (Gelsi, Marketwatch) When Barbara Boxer and Russ Feingold pulled their support last Friday, it appeared Ben Bernanke might not get Senate confirmation for a second term. Now he look safe.

Fannie, Freddie should be eliminated, Frank says (Timiraos/Crittenden, WSJ) Unlikely this means Barney Frank will stop rolling the dice to subsidize housing with the public purse.

Leviathan stirs again (Economist) The return of big government the world over. This is not a good thing. Federal government is probably the least efficient allocator of resources in the economy. Not that we need smaller government overall, we just need smaller federal government. States and localities govern more efficiently. The federal government should be shrunk dramatically and the power/tax base of state and local gov’ts should expand.

Right-wing flame war (Dee, NYT) The story of Charles Johnson and his blog Little Green Footballs.

Newspapers are failing because their articles are too long (Kinsley, Atlantic) Shameless self-promotion: Reuters BreakingViews tells you what you need to know about financial news in 350 words or less!

2010: The year of the renter? (Toy, NYT) This story is NY specific. But I must say it’s good to live in the Hudson Yards area of Manhattan. Some of the best deals on apts in NYC at the moment as there’s way too much inventory around here….

Will NY soda tax drive some to drink? (CityRoom) This is a pretty stupid argument from soda bottlers who are opposed to new taxes on their product. Beer and soda aren’t exactly perfect substitutes…

Cat vs. Bear

Must Read — Kyle Bass: Testimony before the FCIC (fcic.gov) Bass is a hedgefunder that made big profits betting against subprime. His testimony has many fascinating facts and figures. [The pie charts on page 9 look familiar.]

Obama to push tax on too-big-to-fail banks (Nasiripour) Not a lot of details: “the planned tax would be imposed in a way that targets firms’ riskiest activities, such as proprietary trading. It would be crafted in a way that doesn’t affect a financial company’s retail banking, so that the cost theoretically would not be passed on to retail customers — but it wasn’t clear exactly how that would work.” And will it tax other TBTF firms besides banks? What about insurers? What about GE? Update: WSJ says the tax will target bank liabilities.

Earthquake in Haiti may have killed over 100,000 (Farie/Varner, Bloomberg) The epicenter of the 7.0 magnitude quake was 10 miles from Haiti’s capital city.

Google China spat shines spotlight on cyberspying (Prodhan/Lee, Reuters) Google has consistently tried to thread the needle between the revenue opportunities provided by the Chinese market, and the censorship restrictions imposed by the Communist Party. This attack was so egregious that Google said it’s had enough.

Prime jumbo RMBS delinquencies jump to 9.2%: Fitch (Golobay, HousingWire) ht Implode-o-Meter.

SEC proposes effective ban on naked access (Younglai/Spicer, Reuters)

FDIC’s Bair blasts other regulators for reluctance on banker pay plan (Paletta, WSJ) I’d hoped to share the video archive with all of you but a day later it’s still not available. There are good arguments that additional curbs on pay will be both tough to design and ineffective at curbing risk. A better regulator is failure. But that’s not Dugan’s point. He just wants to protect banks.

VIDEO — Lennart Green does close up card magic (TED talks)

Clever 2010 calendar (imgur)

Another dose of Martian awesome (Plait, Discover)

A Chinese thanks Google for standing up to the communists (more)…

Judge Rakoff has rejected the settlement deal between the SEC and Bank of America. He clearly wasn’t happy with it to begin with, and subsequent briefs from the two parties did nothing to allay his concerns. At the end of the day, he hated the idea that B of A shareholders, on whose behalf the SEC actually brought the case, would end up paying the fine for executives’ wrongdoing.

So what’s the next step? According to the Reuters story, “Rakoff directed the parties to prepare for a possible trial that would begin no later than February 1, 2010.”

That doesn’t mean there will be a trial. The parties could come back with a settlement more to Rakoff’s liking.

But presumably that would have to involve naming names. Who were the executives responsible for misleading shareholders? B of A has refused to answer that question and the SEC seems to think it doesn’t have the leverage to force it out of them.

I’m happy to see this development. I’m on-record saying the SEC should pick more fights. The truth of the matter is that we need more accountability at the top. The point behind Sarbanes-Oxley, for instance, was that executives would take more responsibility for their misdeeds, in this case Ken Lewis and John Thain.

Too often, “The Corporation” gets the blame and pays the fine. But that isn’t justice, nor does it deter bad behavior.

(Here’s the PDF of Rakoff’s full order)

The latest briefs are in in the SEC/Bank of America case and it’s more of the same. BofA claims it didn’t mislead investors because they should have known Merrill’s people would be bonused. The SEC says that’s ridiculous, that the disclosure statement laying out the bonuses should have, ya know, been disclosed. The fact that it wasn’t means BofA misled shareholders.

The bottom line is that these filings break no new ground. The reason Judge Rakoff ordered BofA and Merrill to file additional briefs on the 24th and again today was because he was dissatisfied with the settlement to begin with. He wanted names. What’s the point of fining shareholders if they were the ones misled by company executives? Shouldn’t those executives be held responsible?

Since neither side gave Rakoff what he asked for, I imagine he may order them back to court for another hearing.

In the meantime, Andrew Cuomo will pick up the SEC’s fumble and run with it. Yesterday his office wrote a letter to BofA’s lead lawyer Lewis Liman complaining that BofA is obstructing its investigation.

The key dispute has to do with attorney-client privilege, which Cuomo’s office says can’t be used as both “sword and shield.” Since BofA executives are claiming they relied on their lawyers to determine what was published in public filings — it’s the lawyers’ fault if anything was misleading — they can’t simultaneously hide the details of those discussions behind attorney client privilege.

Cuomo is giving them till next Monday to reconsider their strategy, otherwise his office will proceed with “charging decisions.” What that means isn’t clear and today Cuomo’s office declined comment.

In the meantime, we’ll wait for Judge Rakoff to weigh in on the latest filings.

In response to “recent press reports” — probably this FT article — SEC Chairman Mary Schapiro sent an open letter to broker-dealer CEOs (see below) requesting them to be “particularly vigilant in ensuring that sales practices are closely monitored.”

It’s good to see her on record, though I suspect she won’t have any impact until she uses her power to make life miserable for shady brokerages.

She’s got good reason to be worried, of course. The FT article noted that happy days are here again if you’re a broker looking for a job:

Bank of America’s Merrill Lynch unit is offering signing packages greater than those handed out in the bull market of 2006 and 2007, as it ramps up its recruitment programme to replace many financial advisers who have left its “thundering herd” in the past year.

…Industry recruiters and people in the company say Merrill Lynch Global Wealth Management is offering signing bonuses of 140 per cent of the previous 12 months’ “production” to lure top advisers, and another 200 per cent over the next five years if the advisers hit aggressive growth targets.

“That’s more than they’ve ever offered,” said one recruiter. “It’s huge.”

Fat, commission-based pay packages will encourage brokers to churn accounts, put investors into unsuitable financial products and engage in other ethically-questionable behavior.

Writing this letter is a nice way to put people on notice, I guess. It can’t do much else.

(For easier reading, click “toggle full screen” top-right and then “+” to zoom in)

At the bottom is the SEC’s latest brief for Judge Rakoff.

Having gone through BofA’s, one finds –publicly disclosed for the first time — the “disclosure schedule” that outlined bonuses BofA had agreed Merrill could pay:

“Variable Incentive Compensation Program (‘VICP’) in respect of 2008 … may be awarded at levels that (i) do not exceed $5.8 billion in aggregate value (inclusive of cash bonuses and the grant date value of long-term incentive awards)…

It’s also on page 10 of the SEC’s brief.

Why does this matter?  Because this is the language that BofA conveniently forgot to include in the SEC filing detailing the merger before it was approved.

BofA’s argument is that even though the filing said Merrill couldn’t pay bonuses without its consent, the fact that the filing referenced the disclosure schedule means shareholders should have been aware Merrill would pay bonuses anyway.

You’d think shareholders would want to see something like that. So why wasn’t the schedule included in the SEC filing?

[BofA CEO Ken] Lewis, [fomer Merrill CEO John] Thain and [former Merrill COO Greg] Fleming were all asked by [SEC] staff why this information was set forth in a disclosure schedule as opposed to the text of the merger agreement itself, but none of them could provide an answer.

But of course they couldn’t.

There’s much more in the brief.

(For easier reading, click “toggle full screen” top-right and then “+” to zoom in)

SEC BRIEF – 8-24-09